Continuous Integration

Posted by indomitablehef | Filed under CruiseControl.Net, NAnt, Continuous Integration, Tools

If I had to rank the things I’ve learned in the past year in order of importance, the undisputed #1 would be Continuous Integration. I’ve known about CI for some time, and I always thought it sounded like a good idea, but I hadn’t made time to try it out. Now that I have, I can hardly imagine working without it. I’m hardly an expert yet, but I’d like to pass on some of the resources that helped me when I was first learning how to set up Automated Build with NAnt and Continuous Integration with CruiseControl.Net.

1. John-Paul Boodhoo’s NAnt starter series
   You have to have an automated build in order to get continuous integration working. Even if that weren’t true, automating your build process would still be and incredibly valuable thing to do. I chose to use NAnt, partly because of the existence of good community content, and lots of examples on how to use it. There’s a medium-steep learning curve, but once you’ve figured it out, it’s really not that hard, and you can really harness the power of automated builds. You don’t have to use NAnt, of course…you could also use MSBuild. Compare the two here. And here. More on using MSBuild here.
2. Automating Your Builds With NAnt - Part 8 (Enter CruiseControl)
   Also from JP Boodhoo, this hour-long screencast will take you step-by-step through the process of setting up Continuous Integration using CruiseControl.Net and NAnt.
3. Martin Fowler’s seminal article on Continuous Integration
   Not convinced that CI is the best thing since Tivo? Read it and see if you feel the same way afterward.
4. ASP.Net Web Application builds using Nant
   If you’re using Web Application Projects, you’ll need this and maybe this, too.
5. NAnt task for creating IIS application pool mappings
   If you’re developing on Windows Vista, like me, and using IIS7, you’ll want to direct your .Net 3.5 apps to the default application pool, and your .Net 2.0 apps to the “Classic .Net 2.0″ Application pool.
6. How to handle embedded resources with NAnt
   I’m using the Wilson ORMapper, and ran into some trouble, initially, with the embedded mapping.config file. This cleared it up.
7. More good examples of using NAnt to build .Net applications
8. NAnt Contrib
   A bunch of additional NAnt tasks

I should note that CruiseControl.Net is not the only choice for continuous integration. Microsoft Team Foundation Server has continuous integration features, and JetBrains has just realeased TeamCity (there’s a free version), which this guy says is fantastic.